Thursday, September 6, 2012

My current and my former
supervisor are very different personalities -not only in their general
character, but especially in their style of leading a research group.

My former supervisor is a
very organized leader, who seems to have everything from deadlines for
proposals to latest possible thesis defense date for each of his PhD students
always present in his head. He says things like: "If you give me your
paper draft until tomorrow at 3:30, I can read it on the plane and send the
comments to you next Wednesday before 10am." and that is exactly what
happens. He is running weekly group meetings not only to have all his students
presenting their stuff once in a while, but he organizes who attends at which
conference, who takes care of the next exchange student, the next group BBQ,...
during these meetings and he lets his group know way in advance when he will be
out of office.

My current supervisor is
much more flexible with these things. Everything gets organized well and people
know when they are in charge of something. But usually these decisions happen
behind the scenes and often enough a new student arrives and only one of the
grad students (the responsible one) knows about it. Same applies for his
"out of office" times. If you need to be aware of them, because i.e.
you have to hand in your thesis soon and there must be enough time for him to
have a look at it, you'll know that he'll be away. But there is no general
“keep the group informed” strategy as with my last supervisor.

While working with my
former supervisor I found his perfect planning and thinking ahead very
admirable yet sometimes even intimidating, as it set the standards very high
for everybody who worked with him. Now I recognize that this actually brings
the individuals in a group much more together. Everybody is on the same page
and knows which deadlines, conferences, students, tasks,… are lying ahead. In my
current group, the information gets transported where needed, but people work
much more separate from each other – which has advantages of its own.

When it comes to my
students, I often find myself acting not very strategic or long-term planned. I
tell them when I’ll be away, but not very much in advance and I’ll let them
know, when I see interesting conferences or workshops coming up, but I don’t
have a specific timeline in my head for each of them. Even though I really
appreciated that my PhD supervisor had this distinct plan and timeline for me
as his PhD student.

I guess this is because I’m
not their main supervisor, so I don’t actually make the strategy for them. I
just push them, annoy them, motivate them, guide them, cheer them up on a daily
basis.

What is a good point in an
academic career to have some deep thoughts and first actions about styles of
leading a research group and strategies for successful PhD supervision? While
you are “only” co-supervising? Or when you start with you first 100%
responsibility student?

about me

After doing my undergrad studies here and there and enjoying my time as a PhD student somewhere else, I'm now a postdoctoral fellow at one of the big Australian universities. My research field belongs to science or engineering - depending on whom you ask.